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TheOtherDave comments on What makes us think _any_ of our terminal values aren't based on a misunderstanding of reality? - Less Wrong
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I'm confused what you mean by this. If there wasn't anything more to say, then nobody would/should ever change what they value? But people's values changes over time, and that's a good thing. For example in medieval/ancient times people didn't value animals' lives and well-being (as much) as we do today. If a medieval person tells you "well we value what we value, I don't value animals, what more is there to say?", would you agree with him and let him go on to burning cats for entertainment, or would you try to convince him that he should actually care about animals' well-being?
You are of course using some of your values to instruct other values. But they need to be at least consistent and it's not really clear which are the "more-terminal" ones. It seems to me byrnema is saying that privileging your own consciousness/identity above others is just not warranted, and if we could, we really should self-modify to not care more about one particular instance, but rather about how much well-being/eudaimonia (for example) there is in the world in general. It seems like this change would make your value system more consistent and less arbitrary and I'm sympathetic to this view.
Fair enough.
Agreed that if someone expresses (either through speech or action) values that are opposed to mine, I might try to get them to accept my values and reject their own. And, sure, having set out to do that, there's a lot more to be relevantly said about the mechanics of how we hold values, and how we give them up, and how they can be altered.
And you're right, if our values are inconsistent (which they often are), we can be in this kind of relationship with ourselves... that is, if I can factor my values along two opposed vectors A and B, I might well try to get myself to accept A and reject B (or vice-versa, or both at once). Of course, we're not obligated to do this by any means, but internal consistency is a common thing that people value, so it's not surprising that we want to do it. So, sure... if what's going on here is that byrnema has inconsistent values which can be factored along a "privilege my own identity"/"don't privilege my own identity" axis, and they net-value consistency, then it makes sense for them to attempt to self-modify so that one of those vectors is suppressed.
With respect to my statement being confusing... I think you understood it perfectly, you were just disagreeing -- and, as I say, you might well be correct about byrnema. Speaking personally, I seem to value breadth of perspective and flexibility of viewpoint significantly more than internal consistency. "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."
Of course, I do certainly have both values, and (unsurprisingly) the parts of my mind that align with the latter value seem to believe that I ought to be more consistent about this, while the parts of my mind that align with the former don't seem to have a problem with it.
I find I prefer being the parts of my mind that align with the former; we get along better.
As humans we can't change/modify ourselves too much anyway, but what about if we're able to in the future? If you can pick and choose your values? It seems to me that, for such entity, not valuing consistency is like not valuing logic. And then there's the argument that it leaves you open for dutch booking / blackmail.
Yes, inconsistency leaves me open for dutch booking, which perfect consistency would not. Eliminating that susceptibility is not high on my list of self-improvements to work on, but I agree that it's a failing.
Also, perceived inconsistency runs the risk of making me seen as unreliable, which has social costs. That said, being seen as reliable appears to be a fairly viable Schelling point among my various perspectives (as you say, the range is pretty small, globally speaking), so it's not too much of a problem.
In a hypothetical future where the technology exists to radically alter my values relatively easily, I probably would not care nearly so much about flexibility of viewpoint as an intrinsic skill, much in the same way that electronic calculators made the ability to do logarithms in my head relatively valueless.